Aeroflot in Skyteam on April 14, 2006

Announced today...
"Aeroflot-Russian International Airlines and Air France have signed an agreement to set up a co-ordinating
committee to prepare a global alliance, the two airlines' heads, Valery Okulov and Jean Spinetti, said at
a joint news conference March 21.

The alliance would also include the United States Delta Airlines and the national airlines of Mexico and
South Korea according to the Itar-Tass news agency."

I can see codeshares on DL equipment, but an internatioal codeshare with SU equipment. That's a long time away.
I might expect to see more flights to Russia or bigger equipment if SU pulls out of some markets, nut most likely, AF will cover them.
Now as far as KAL, it would make sense if they could keep their planes in the air. It might be DL's best hope for an asian partner. At least with SU as a partner, KAL might not get its planes shot down.

Given that the only non-stop flights between the US and Russian (unless Transaero is still flying LAX-SVO) are Aeroflot and DL, this could potentially raise competition issues as well. Indeed, SU and DL "compete" head-to-head on JFK-SVO.

Based on past experience, I wouldn't be surprised if this press release were mostly speculative.

Flying Dutchman: But that Chaplain will always be in an exit seat.
I'm sure others on here have flown SU. My experience says that there's no poorer way to fly, except on one of Russia's renamed internal airlines. Even if you speak the language (as I do), service is slovenly, the peanuts are stale (and that's dinner in F), and there's no leg room. Oh, well, DL has been trying unsucsessfully (did I spell that correctly? Something doesn't seem quite right) to forge a workable alliance for quite some time and hasn't seemed to make it. Air Mozambique might be a good shot.

To express disappointment with the turn of events, and not to be disputatious, AF is also not the world's worst intl airline, but many (most?) Delta elites think that DL is the best US airline, and one of the best intl airlines. Teamed with SR, DL had a best of breed alliance. Without SR, but with AF, the alliance has no benefit to many DL elites, since DL elites will often either fly only DL or put miles in *A of 1W. In my case, DL's loss (no DL codeshares on AF sold to me) will be *A's gain. SQ and LH intl are best of breed.